Great Graphic: World GDP Per Capita

This Great Graphic comes from The Economist. It depicts world GDP per capita and shows the contribution from advanced and developing countries. It notes that per capita GDP growth rates have returned to pre-crisis levels, though the composition has changed.

Developing countries are contributing the lion's share of the world growth. The financial crisis has been centered in the advanced economies. However, we note that the US is the only major advanced economy where output has surpassed the pre-crisis levels.

There also seems to be a measuring problem here. Do those categories even have merit or is it like the label "recession" which has no agreed upon definitionAre advanced and developing categories fixed over time? If a country, such as Israel or South Korea, OECD members incidentally, have higher per capita GDP than some countries in western and central Europe, should they still be considered developing ? If some countries can move up from developing to advanced, can't other countries, such as Greece, for example, slip from advanced to developing?

Great Graphic: World GDP Per Capita
Reviewed by Marc Chandler
on
October 12, 2012
Rating: 5